


Under the Table

by dracoqueen22



Series: Truth in Advertising [8]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, Pre-Dark Cybertron, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-20 22:22:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9518561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: Behind the scenes, in the background, and the dark, shadowy places where secret deals are struck. These are the stories lingering in the periphery of Blurr and Starscream's own, canonical pieces of Truth in Advertising that didn't make it into the main narrative.





	1. Lust or Loathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starscream didn’t know which it was existed between them. (Starscream/Jazz, pre-TIA canon)

Starscream had long since stopped asking how Jazz snuck into his habsuite. It was a foregone conclusion now.

Besides, why waste time asking questions when he could enjoy the sexy spy straddling his thigh? Jazz’s panels were closed, as they often were, but still gave off a scorching heat. The scrape-slide of his valve panel against Starscream’s thigh armor was a maddening tease.

As Jazz often was.

“Primus, you’re sexy,” Jazz gasped as he rode Starscream’s thigh like he might a spike, his hips rocking and rolling to his own special rhythm. His right knee kept nudging at Starscream’s own interface array, sending pressure and vibration through his empty, aching valve.

But two could play this game and Starscream’s own panels were closed, too.

“I know,” Starscream replied, amused. He cupped Jazz’s aft with one hand, inching Jazz closer, and let the other toy with Jazz’s sensory horns, stroking them gently.

Jazz shivered. His field rolled out, stroking over Starscream’s. “And modest, too.”

“You should know by now that flattery won’t work on me,” Starscream retorted with a curve of his lips as Jazz’s rocking increased in earnest. His ex-vents came in short, sharp bursts, his lips parting as he panted. Little curls of charge licked over his frame.

Frag if he wasn’t a hot little thing, too. Pity that keeping him wasn’t an option on the table at the moment.

Jazz smirked at him, his glossa sweeping over his lips. “Yeah, well, it never hurts to try, Starbaby.”

Starscream patted his aft. “Your nicknames are also ridiculous.”

Jazz laughed and slung an arm over Starscream’s shoulder, bringing the close enough that his bumper brushed Starscream’s cockpit. “Want me to stop then?” His visor flashed.

Starscream rolled his optics. “As pointless as that would be--”

Jazz interrupted him with another barked laugh, his knee applying a firmer pressure against Starscream’s panel, sending a bolt of pleasure through his array. “Make me,” he purred.

Starscream’s optics narrowed. He pinched Jazz’s sensory horn between two fingers and smirked as Jazz’s backstrut curved, as he sighed a moan and pleasure licked through his field.

“Ahh, you know how to treat a bot right, Starbaby,” Jazz sighed.

Starscream squeezed harder and was treated to a low whimper, one that sent a bolt of desire straight into his spark. “Then perhaps you should take that as the hint it is,” he retorted.

Jazz’s visor half-lit. His other hand slid over Starscream’s ventrum, tickling into his seams. He revved his engine. “Ya don’t have a leash strong enough,” he purred.

“Yet anyway.” Starscream leaned in to steal those tempting lips, but just like the squirmy spy he was, Jazz deftly avoided him with a little chuckle.

“Mmm. Never will.” Jazz teased his clavicular strut, fingers stroking over the side of Starscream’s intake. “That isn’t how this plays, remember?”

The touch was delicate, soft, teasing enough to be arousing – and also a pointed reminder of how close to off-lining he was every time he allowed Jazz into his berth.

“Frag you,” Starscream muttered.

Jazz’s low laugh was the first genuine sound of amusement he made all evening. “That’s what we’re doing, or am I confused, hm?” He rocked forward, knee scraping heavily over Starscream’s panel, his own leaking profusely over Starscream’s thigh. “Lemme have that overload, yeah?”

Starscream’s grip on Jazz’s sensory horn tightened to the point of stressing the metal, but Jazz didn’t so much as hiss. “Hate you,” he growled as the yanked their frames together and shivered as heat and charge poured over him.

“Love you, too, Starshine,” Jazz purred.

Sometimes, Starscream wasn’t sure if it was lust or loathing that existed between them.

Maybe they were one and the same.


	2. The Scent of Your Intent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage smelled of sweetness and desperation and lies. Rattrap couldn’t get enough.

Mirage smelled of fancy polish, rare metals, sweet engex, and lies. He stank of the establishment, of exorbitant galas, ornamental upgrades, and haughty self-importance.

Beneath it all was a telltale odor, that of a mech pathetically out of place and clinging to pride because it was all he had left.

Mirage was intoxicating.

“You reek,” Mirage muttered as he clung to Rattrap’s hips and thrust up harder, his spike throbbing a desperate beat.

“Yeah?” Rattrap smirked and leaned forward, his hands braced on that pretty, polished chestplate. “So do you.”

“Impossible.”

“Not ta my sensors it ain’t.” Rattrap dragged his lips along the curve of Mirage’s jaw, his fingers rapping a nonsense rhythm. “Must be that ya like it, given the way yer squirmin’.”

Mirage vented hotly, his grip tightening. “It is release. Nothing more.”

“Mmm. Keep telling yourself that, towerling.” Rattrap bit into his intake, denta leaving impressions in the dermal metal. Mirage shuddered. “Just remember which of us crawled into the other’s berth first.”

Newsflash: it hadn’t been Rattrap.

Mmm. And there is was again. That sweet scent of confusion and lust and desperation.

Rattrap fragging loved it.

“This means nothing,” Mirage gritted out even as he writhed and charged danced visibly over his armor. As his engine purred closer toward overload.

Rattrap chuckled and lapped at the impression his fangs left behind. “We’ll see.”


	3. Of Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz and Prowl have disagreed on many things. It comes as no surprise that supporting Starscream is another in a long, long list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place around chapter 44/45 of Truth in Advertising.

Jazz was aware he wasn’t alone.

He’d been feeling the weight of this particular glare for a week now, always hovering in his periphery, watching him with both curiosity and anger. Its owner had been biding his time, perhaps waiting for the perfect moment, the most cutting turn of phrase.

Jazz supposed now was as good a time as any.

“I don’t understand you.”

Jazz leaned harder against the rust-stained wall and folded his arms under his bumper. His backstrut tingled, as it always did when someone stood behind him, but he wasn’t afraid of this one stabbing him in the back.

He probably should be.

“Ya never did,” Jazz said.

“How can you work with him?” A frame moved up beside him, an echo of his own, a contradiction in black and white, expression severe, plating tight. “How can you support him? Offer him your loyalty?”

Prowl sneered, and there was so much hatred in his expression, his field, that Jazz pitied him. He understood it, Prowl’s got a lot of reason to hate. Didn’t mean Jazz was going to put up with it though.

He and Prowl weren’t friends. They never had been. They worked together well. They made for great soldiers and members of command. But friendship was and had always been out of reach. They were too much alike, and not in the way Jazz and Starscream were alike. A different way.

A harsher way.

“Have you forgotten who he is?”

Jazz gave him a sidelong look. “Maybe you’ve forgotten who I am.”

Prowl’s lips curled with derision. “I’m not playing a game of words with you right now. I want a straight answer for once, Jazz.”

“I don’t give those out like reward chips. You know that.” Jazz shrugged and shifted his attention back to the stage, where a crowd had begun to gather, and a work crew was applying the final touches, preparing the platform for Starscream’s announcement.

“I think I deserve one, for this betrayal.”

Jazz scoffed. He rolled his optics behind his visor. “And who’ve I betrayed, pray tell? The leader who walked out on us?”

“That’s not what happened!” Prowl’s door panels jerked upward, betraying his agitation. His field burst outward, and Jazz could feel the hurt in it. A pain Jazz knew was not caused by Jazz himself.

Prime leaving, abandoning his title and assuming Orion Pax again, had hurt them all.

“It is.” Jazz pushed up from the wall and half-turned toward his former commander. Or maybe current.

They weren’t, technically, at war. Jazz was nominally an Autobot, but without a war, without a Prime, he didn’t have to follow Prowl if he didn’t want to. He liked Bee, he truly did. Bumblebee was a good egg.

But he wasn’t what Cybertron needed right now.

“I ain’t loyal to Starscream,” Jazz said as he lifted his chin. “I’m loyal to the vision. The original one. Before factions turned it into ‘us versus them’.”

Prowl shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.” He lifted a hand, rubbed at his chevron. “Though why am I surprised? You never make sense.”

“Ya just don’t know where to look.”

Prowl hissed an exasperated vent. “You’re treading on your own point, Jazz! Starscream’s not even an Autobot.”

“And you’re missing the point, _Prowl_ ,” Jazz drawled. “Cybertron needs a leader. We all do. We don’t none of us know anything but following anymore.”

Prowl’s panels jerked. “We had a leader.”

“No, you had a figurehead who didn’t quite know what he wanted or what he was doing,” Jazz retorted, flashing his visor. “Starscream, at least, does.”

Prowl snorted. “Starscream is a mess.”

“You say that as if I’m unaware.” Jazz flicked a dismissing hand, casting a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure they had no eavesdroppers. “I know Starscream. I know how he thinks. He doesn’t want power for power’s sake. That’s not what this is about. He wants validation. Respect. Acknowledgment. And those are things I can work with.”

Prowl folded his arms under his bumper. His scowl deepened, turning the lovely lines of his face into something ugly. “Playing your games, as you always do.”

“Like you’re one to talk. You’ve got twice as many strings as me. At least my people know when I give them a tug.”

“Did Blurr?” Prowl demanded, his optics flashing. “How much did you sell him to Starscream for?”

Jazz’s engine growled. “Mech, do you really wanna go there right now?” His hands curled into fists at his side.

He hated how much Prowl’s accusations rang within him like all the worst things he’d accused himself of doing. But Blurr and Starscream was one thing which was not Jazz’s fault. Starscream had gone to Blurr, and Blurr had accepted, and Jazz had done everything in his power to end it.

He’d failed. And yes, that was on him. But he wasn’t to blame.

Prowl glared. His engine snarled.

Jazz stared right back, reminding himself that this wasn’t a battle. That they weren’t supposed to be enemies, but allies.

Primus, this was where they always ended up.

Jazz sighed and scrubbed a hand over his head. “Look,” he said. “Optimus left _both_ of us. And we all gotta deal with the pieces of that. We gotta do what we can.” He pointed to the ground at his feet. “This is how I choose to do it. So you can either help me or keep wallowing in the war. Call me a traitor all you want. At least I made a fragging choice.”

“Yes. Your choice is quite obvious.” Prowl’s tone was more venomous than an angry Skuxxoid’s. “Enjoy your Seeker. I’ll try not to laugh when he stabs you in the back, as he inevitably does.”

Jazz noisily cycled a ventilation. “Are we done here?”

Prowl gave him a disgusted look. “Yeah. We’re done.” He dropped his arms and spun on a heel, his panels flat against his back. “I’ll see you on the stage.”

“Yeah, looking forward to it,” Jazz muttered.

He scraped a hand down his face. He performed a systems check, chasing the irritation and defensiveness from his field. He didn’t want or need Prowl’s approval. Though a lot of this would’ve been easier with Prowl’s help.

As the humans would say, _c’est la vie._

Jazz sighed and turned back toward the stage. It was nearing time for Starscream’s big announcement and Jazz had some things of his own to handle.

Peace was a harder battle than war.

Prowl would get that sooner or later.

But for now… to battle it was.

Jazz got to work.

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna go ahead and mark this as complete, but if I do get any more random ideas, I'll still put them here. Thanks for reading!


End file.
